With news that Camp Bestival, the family-friendly festival held at Lulworth Castle in Dorset, has just sold out of advance tickets, we were shocked to also read that its organisers are expecting 30,000 people on-site over the weekend.
When the family-friendly festival started two years ago, it was a lovely experience. Regular readers will remember us raving about it in 2008 and 2009.
At the 2009 event, 12,000 people was probably slightly more than we would’ve liked, but was a reasonable-sized festival to feel comfortable having your kids at.
It size was much like Bestival in the old days but not quite as frantic, but obviously with more kids and kiddie activities around, it wasn’t as raucous.
Happy with 30,000 people?
According to the BBC article, Rob Da Bank says that they’re comfortable with the 30,000 figure for Camp Bestival and states that it won’t get any bigger in the future.
We might be wrong, but we thought we’d heard that same quote when Bestival reached 30,000 on the Island in 2008. However, we understand that last year, the numbers including crew, artistes and punters, were well over 50,000 on site.
Will the increase in capacity change the experience?
When capacity increases too much at a festival, it tends to lead to trouble.
Last year at Bestival we had loads of our stuff stolen out of our tent on the first night and had graffiti spray-painted over our classic 1969 vintage tent the second night. Both a result, we feel, of the festival getting too big.
I’m heading off with VB junior to Camp Bestival this weekend, so it’ll be very interesting to see whether our positive 2008 and 2009 experiences are matched, now the capacity has ballooned.
See BBC article
